This is a wonderful question, and I want to break it down even further. First, what does a "healthy life" entail? Is it eating organic, visiting the doctor regularly, exercising regularly, getting enough sleep, or being completely alcohol and drug-free? Is having a healthy life also about not having stress and being able to enjoy quality time with loved ones as well as with oneself? I ask all these questions because so much of what makes a "healthy" lifestyle is presented as a monolith exemplified by the dominant culture. When we engage in conversations about what makes a healthy lifestyle, there is a lot of desirability and morality politics that inform what society deems healthy and WHO gets access to those things. For instance, can we really talk about a healthy lifestyle without addressing the fact that there are so many food deserts across the United States and they exist predominantly in poor black and brown neighborhoods? When healthcare is not universal? When body autonomy is subject of political debate? The question should not be if I believe a healthy life is important-- no one will disagree about that; I believe the real question is HOW do we ensure every person has the option to pursue a healthy lifestyle regardless of social class and economic privilege. This leads me to the morality component of what the dominant culture believes is a "healthy life". For example, the way the dominant culture perceives people with disabilities is that we need to make sure people with disabilities have a life that approximates a fully able-bodied person instead of adopting a model of body diversity. This is also manifested in fatphobia and fat politics. A healthy lifestyle has to act in favor of white supremacy and the idyllic body. Therefore, a lot of the time the dominant culture will push unhealthy patterns in favor of creating a socially acceptable image. An example of this is how normalized something like intermittent fasting has become when in fact that is a pattern of disordered eating in which a person is restricting certain meals. Is a person healthy simply because their body is small? Or are people healthy because they can afford to take those expensive movement classes? When people are PERCEIVED as being unhealthy, we immediately apply the morality clause to them: they are not good people if they are not subscribing to the "healthy" lifestyle. So, how can anyone maintain a healthy life? I think this is a two-part effort. For those of us who enjoy economic and social class privilege, a healthy lifestyle must also involve caring for others in the ways we can. Whether it be by offering our labor or services at reduced rates or donating to crowdfunding efforts for individuals who cannot afford the luxury of "health" others can. The second part is assessing how we moralize body politics and what we gain from them. Why are we so offended by people who are physically disabled, fat, genderqueer, and dark-skinned? Why are these identifiers immediately perceived as unhealthy? Why do we assume people who look a certain way are somehow less human and therefore deserve less compassion, respect, or support? A healthy life means nothing if it is entirely egotistical--that is just called white supremacy.

The first twenty-three years of my life were spent in "survival" mode. I am privileged to say this in hindsight, with the awareness I slowly unearthed over the last five years of therapy. The person I was when I began therapy treatment would not recognize the person I am today in the best way possible. Putting emotional, psychological, and physical effort into therapy has impacted my life immensely. Even its darkest recesses of my mind have light shed on them- if only temporarily- showing me healing is always possible with patience and support. I would say the greatest impact my mental health improvement has had on my life has been my ability to ask for help and receive support from others when I need it. This quality has not only come in handy amidst a global pandemic, but it has also strengthened my relationships with my friends, family, and my partner. Accepting vulnerability as a normal part of being a human has allowed me to share myself fully with the people I love, which in turn, helps the people I love to share themselves more with me. It still boggles my mind that I believed for most of my life that I did not like people, when in fact, I was scared of being vulnerable around people and it was easier to make it my choice to reject others before facing any potential rejection myself. My worldviews have changed drastically as well. I was more cynical and entitled when I was younger. I think about the saying "hurt people hurt people", and I feel I really embodied that as a protective mechanism in my youth. My own exhaustion in carrying the burden of loneliness made me further isolate from people. I am humbled by the adaptability, flexibility, and empathy I allow myself to experience in adulthood. Therapy has really challenged the ways in which I make sense of the world around me, and I daresay it has helped me restore some of my faith in humankind. Therapy has helped me move away from the auto-colonized belief that I need to be an individual in order to be successful in the world, and instead, I am returning to my collectivist ancestral upbringing-- individuals are always stronger together. Besides, what is the point of being so great as an individual if you are also alone and you had to put people down along the way? Finally-- and perhaps, most porminent- are my career choices' shift over the course of my mental health journey. I went from feeling aimless and useless to see a clear path for myself as a mental health counselor. Did you know that people who experience complex trauma develop highly attuned empathy as a protective mechanism so they can anticipate when someone around them may be dangerous or harmful? For so many years, I looked at my highly attuned empathy as a "factory flaw"- after all, the only acceptable emotions within the context of my family are anger and apathy. Now, I see it as an incredible skill of resilience and survival. What was once born out of need is my greatest tool to connect with clients. I have turned a scary and sad childhood into self-love and self-acceptance; I am the proof to clients who are only starting out in their journey that healing happens. It will not be linear, it will not be pretty, and it will not always be clear cut, but it will certainly be rewarding! Even writing this- letting complete strangers know I attend therapy regularly despite growing up in a family and community that views mental health as "wealthy people problems"- is my own act of resistance to the idea my younger self held that asking for help meant I was weak and not worth anyone's time. I am excited to help as many people as I can to feel human in all its complexity, without judgement, guilt, or shame.

My favorite book is Little King December by Axel Hacke. Even though it's a children's book, I feel that every time I read it, I uncover something special or hidden about myself and how I make meaning of my relationships and my position in this world. I identify with the premise that individuals are born actually knowing everything and slowly building walls around that knowledge as we age and conform to forced social conventions. I also love the idea that individuals can grow and change- become smaller or bigger over time- but the size of our ideas remains infinitely large. I like to read this book once or twice per year to remind myself that creativity and emotional awareness reign supreme, despite what ideas of success or worth capitalism have caused us to internalize and believe about ourselves. Whenever I become disillusioned by the state of the world, Little King December reminds me to approach others with curiosity, compassion, and hope. The world has the power of becoming an abundant, peaceful place when we move through our lives and social interactions with inherent care and no doubt, power-thirst, or mistrust.

My long-term professional goals entail acquiring my professional licensure as a mental health counselor and furthering my professional development by becoming a certified sex educator and sex therapist. My hope is that I can provide a crucial nuanced treatment approach to individuals whose experiences and identities have been consistently minoritized. Currently, roughly 40% of counselors in the United States identify as women, and only 14% identify as black or African American; however, most of the clients who end up receiving court-mandated therapy are also disproportionately black and brown individuals. In addition to living within the systems of white supremacy, capitalism, and imperialism, clients of color seldom have the choice to work with someone whose cultural background or experiences may be similar to theirs or have opportunities to explore their own racial identity development in a space where power dynamics are neutralized. I see my role as a future counselor as essential for the wellness and healing of my immigrant, latinx communities in the United States, and I hope to help bridge the representation gap of BIPOC individuals in mental health as well as in sexual health and education. Both sexuality and mental health spaces remain predominantly white, cisgender, heteronormative, and middle class, and it is my hope to become bring some perspective into these fields, following the footsteps of the many counselors and educators of color I admire.

My main goal for the future is to become a decolonizing sex therapist and sex educator as I feel these are roles in which black, indigenous, and other people of color are grossly underrepresented. I think mental health, especially in a covid-19 world, is essential for our community's healing and our future survival as a society. I aspire to work with a diverse population of individuals across races, ethnicities, gender identities, sexual orientations, and relationship styles and bring sexual education practices to people of all ages across various settings. Additionally, down the line of my professional career, I would like to open a clinic that centers on decolonization across multiple theoretical models and modalities that can also double as a community space that can hold multicultural events as well.

I am excited by language processing technologies, such as translators or interpreting machines or aids that help individuals communicate beyond language barriers. Google, for example, added features to their application Google Translate that enhance the quality of life of any individual in a foreign region. Now, any individual with the application can use the camera of their phone to point a sign that can be translated in seconds by simply scanning it. As an immigrant, I struggled with culture shock and felt insecure communicating in a different language from my mother tongue. I hope there continue to be more advancements in translation technology so that individuals such as immigrants, refugees, or travelers have access to secure communication regardless of their own personal language skills. I believe this kind of technology is the future of communication as well as the future of human connection.

I am a first-generation Honduran-American as well as a first-generation college graduate, and I take great pride in all that I have accomplished with my family's sacrifices. I completed my undergraduate education in three years; during that time, I focused on humanities- primarily philosophy, literature, and technical theater. At a young age, I was not sure what profession I wanted to pursue, and my undergraduate education taught me about myself more than anything else. Currently, I am completing a Master's program in mental health counseling- a career I decided to pursue due to the immense need for counselors in my communities. Now, with the covid-19 pandemic, I see how much more important it is for me to be a counselor and help individuals process the trauma the last two years have brought. With the money I save, I would like to focus on gaining further expertise to be a trauma-informed therapist and provide low-cost or free services to individuals who may have a very high need for treatment but lack the resources or access to high-quality, equitable treatment.

Growing up, I understood leadership as hierarchical, and inherently about power: one person in charge and everyone else will follow. For the most part, the leaders I grew up watching were predominantly white, cisgender, heterosexual men and women-- all my teachers and doctors, as well as the presidents and other politicians in positions of power. My own leadership skills changed the moment I stopped looking at leaders in roles that are systemically oppressive and I began to follow leaders who were actively trying to dismantle the structure of hierarchy and power. Activists and educators whose content was created from a stance of collective liberation shifted in me how I make sense of leadership. Today, I can say I identify as a decolonizing therapist in training- and in the context of school, I am a leader to my community by speaking out to injustices and oppressions that are normalized in academia. Leadership looks like accepting feedback and taking accountability for oneself and being able to practice what I preach. Leadership is creating space for folks who are not as loud as I am to express themselves safely and give credit where it is due. Teachers are the real unsung leaders of any given community, much more so than other individuals in roles that may appear to be more obviously leadership-oriented as other, more obvious leadership roles that are inherently hierarchical. Additionally, leadership to me looks like creating a community around the ideas and values that align with my being-- that means I am making an active effort to take up space in roles where my visible identities are not welcome. I am in the process of becoming a licensed therapist, not just to be a therapist but to be so much more to individuals, groups, couples, and families in the city I will practice. I see my role as the therapist in conjunction with the roles of educator, activist, and policymaker. I view all of these different roles as leadership roles because these inhabit spaces in which I have struggled time and time again to find people who look like me, meaning fat, queer, disabled, brown folks are missing from mental health conversations. In the future, I hope to be a leader by being an educator as well as a clinician. One of the major concerns that I hope to address as a therapist is reproductive justice and equity, especially among younger populations. To accomplish this, I hope to create curricula that support body awareness, boundaries, and consent; focusing particularly on developing emotional self-awareness to communicate and understand boundaries. Being a leader- by my definitions and standards of equity- is important to me because I believe I have the nature to empower others to be the best and most authentic version of themselves. Moreover, I believe I need to share the information I am learning about the human experience and de-center the imperialist, post-colonial narratives that are forced onto all of us by white supremacy.

"Good begets good; evil begets evil..."- Paul Auster Even though the famous author Paul Auster is getting the credit for this statement, I have to admit the first time I heard the phrase was in a completely different context- namely, a 1997 film directed by Luc Besson titled 'The Fifth Element. The words uttered by priest Cornelius in an act of passive retaliation to the inherent violence of an army being the 'first line of defense against the unknown' resounded in my then-7-year-old mind, thus becoming a pillar of my morality and critical thought. Observing morality from a cultural lens, growing up in Central America as a place with rigid moral boundaries, I believed for most of my life that true morality was right versus wrong, black, versus white, good versus bad, and so on. On the one hand, that rigidity was affirming during infancy and childhood; I knew what would get me praise and what would get me punishment, therefore my mind conceptualized morality as a series of behaviors and actions that will either yield praise or punishment (if it has not yet become apparent to the reader, I am the youngest sibling of two). However, black or white thinking became increasingly difficult as I grew older and learned more about the world in terms of society, status, money, and power. Suddenly, I could not understand how a person who presented as good would be capable of doing something bad. Despite people in positions of power being outwardly belligerent, their behaviors were not met with punishment. I needed to rethink and amend my own morality manual as I continued to poke holes in what I once thought was a solid reality. By late adolescence and early adulthood, I was on the verge of becoming a self-proclaimed anarchist and join an anarchist collective, unaware of the oxymoron and the precipitating hatred I would get from "real anarchists" who call out posers. I left my home when I was sixteen years old and I needed to become more flexible about my own cultural expectations because I knew I would encounter people I knew nothing about. But the quote remained in the back of my mind inside its timeless problem for humankind-- good begets good, therefore evil begets evil. I was never a warrior because I understood the point of a fight was destruction, not creation; but I loved arguing with people. Put me in a room with a conservative person who would rather see me dead before seeing me as an equal, and I will make it my personal mission to help that person see my humanity. I was not able to do that before because I was afraid of conflict- assuming it was always negative- but I understand that true intention lies in the goal or expected outcome and not the person's behaviors. Before any big decision, I always think to myself: "what am I hoping to gain from my decision, and will it cause harm to the world?"

I have one personal instagram account @flourescent.chimichanga, and a mental health/meme account @birb_alerbs I- like many LGBTQ+ folks- have a complicated and almost non-existent relationship with any blood relatives. I moved to New York City and created space for myself with fellow queer friends. As a child, I was always afraid that being myself would lead to isolation and loneliness, and my chosen family shows me every day how untrue that fear was.

Immigrants experience a complex intersection of identities and beliefs, some mutable, that impact their lives in the short- and long term. For a lot of immigrant communities in the United States, individuals are fighting for basic human rights, protecting the legacy of their own cultural background while still trying to assimilate to their new environment. This process alone can be extremely exhausting and stressful; which- in addition to potential language barriers, biased hiring protocols in the workforce, ongoing racism on a structural, systemic level as well as on an individual basis, immigrant communities are left to feel unsupported and like they cannot rely on anything or anyone for help or support. Additionally, mental health counseling and the concept of psychology as we understand it in the United States is vehemently focused and only emphasizes the priorities and goals of individualistic cultures and communities, making it very difficult for individuals from collectivist backgrounds to feel comfortable in individual or group therapy. Mental health is a western, eurocentric, racially white field, and the concept of multiculturalism and inclusivity is a relatively new concept. Therefore, due to the lack of accessibility for culturally aware, language-appropriate therapy services, immigrants must also grapple with the culture shock of living in a new environment, the struggles of racial, ethnic, and religious biases and discrimination that are pervasive in the United States-- all while being forcefully put in the position by other members of the dominant, American society to be the sole representatives of their whole race/ethnicity/religion. My decision to pursue mental health counseling as a first-generation Honduran immigrant in the United States is two-fold. On the one hand, the experience of becoming a counselor is therapeutic in itself for me. I have always wanted to do something professionally that would have a long-term impact on my communities. Becoming a therapist for me means healing a tethered relationship between me, my mind, and my identities. There are not many people working in mental health that look like me, and I believe diversity in the field is the first step toward serving a truly diverse population. On the other hand, mental health has always been perceived in my communities of immigrant, Honduran, woman, fat, queer as a privilege or something bored people have access to because they have the time and resources to do so. I want to change that view, that mental health is tangential, that our humanities are not the most important thing in the world; I want people to learn to accept themselves, and in that, find acceptance for their surroundings. Psychoeducation will play a huge component in the destigmatization of mental health as most people hold believe psychology to be taboo. Additionally, I would like to do more research specifically on the experiences of latinx immigrants across the United States, in the hopes to bring new information to the field of mental health and treatment options for collectivist communities and immigrant populations.

In hindsight, I can share with you that I grew up in a very precarious environment with a lot of resource insecurities, lack of emotional nourishment, and very strict parenting. Despite the enormous amount of physical, emotional, and psychological labor both of my parents spent to care for my sister and me better than their parents could, our family suffered a lot of shortcomings. I wanted to preface my response with this fact about my family because I believe, in most cases, parents in underserved communities are always between a rock and a hard place. Our children have to navigate being the product of systemic and structural hierarchies with no explanations or hope for things to change. Medical and mental healthcare is our birthright, and my long-term plans in the field of mental health are to create more accessible, high-quality resources for people who have fallen through the cracks of our current healthcare system. My relationship with mental health- not just my own health, but the health of my family- has evolved tremendously in the last ten years. I went from believing that I was lazy and somehow a bad person if I was not being productive or of service to others at all times, to explore what it means to live at the intersection of all my identities. Although last year I would have said I have struggled with suicidal ideation only in the last five years, my own therapy work amidst the covid-19 pandemic showed me parts of myself I had repressed as a child for my own survival. I believe now that I have struggled with passive suicidal ideations since I was a child (earliest memory at eight years old); that I have struggled with active suicidal ideations with no plan but serious intent for the better part of my 20s; that every day I have woken up during the pandemic lockdown, I have been surprised to see another day. The work I want to do as a counselor is motivated by my own experiences with feelings of hopelessness and isolation. The funds of this scholarship would help me complete my second year of the mental health counseling program I am currently on, and possibly help me find additional resources and professional development to help children and adolescents with suicide prevention treatments and psychoeducation.